


It's All in the Wrist

by tisfan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Inappropriate Erections, Kidnapped Tony Stark, M/M, Tony Stark Has Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-13 12:26:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11185110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Tony Stark gets kidnapped. (again)Unluckily for him, Bucky Barnes is the only person he can reach out to for help.





	It's All in the Wrist

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Luniana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luniana/gifts).



> I did a little contest for a custom fic, when I was close to 500 followers on tumblr. The winner of that contest was [whatisluniana](https://whatisluniana.tumblr.com/) and here is their fic request…
> 
> “Out of all the people in the world you could pick to come and save you, and you choose me…” Their rival’s eyes gleamed, and they bit down on their lip, utterly failing to smother a grin. “I’m flattered.”
> 
> “Just get me out of here!” 
> 
> Later 
> 
> “Why did you come for me?”
> 
> “Because if anyone’s going to bring you to your knees, it’s gonna be me.”

_Wakanda_

Bucky was beginning to think he’d inherited Steve’s _itch_. They’d talked about it several times when they were both younger, before the serum. Before the war. Steve’s constant twitchy fingers, a hand that had ached to hold a pencil and sketch, to balance a brush on the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. He had often stopped dead in the middle of the street to just stare at someone, or something, and Bucky had learned that it meant he was committing a scene to memory to be able to draw it later.

Bucky had always put money aside, had lurked around places like the newspaper and rummaged through their pins for pencil nubs and scrapped paper that Steve’s itchy fingers could get some relief.

Bucky hadn’t seen Steve hold a pencil since Bucky’d been awakened from his stasis pod in Wakanda. When he had asked, Steve just said that he didn’t see anything worth drawing.

Bucky thought that might have been the worst thing he’d heard in the better part of a century.

Except now his hand itched.

Not the flesh one, the one with callouses from holding a gun, and not the old metal one, the one with so much blood on it. But the new one.

The new one that had arrived, crated up and packed in special foam to protect it. The new one that had no name attached to it. The new one that Bucky had damn good reason to suspect had been made by Tony fucking Stark.

It would be easier, Bucky thought, if he could just hate the guy. Instead, the whole situation was like force-feeding himself wormwood and bile. There was guilt and shame and anguish over what he’d done, no matter how many times Steve had tried to absolve him. (He couldn’t. There was no way, ever, that Steve could forgive him for his crimes, because Steve was… well, Steve. He was fucking loyal. He rescued 400 men during the War just because Bucky was there. He’d never see the blood on Bucky’s hands, even if Bucky wiped if off on his fucking jacket.)

It didn’t matter; even if Tony Stark forgave him, Bucky could never hear it from the people that actually mattered. The lives he’d snuffed out on Hydra’s orders. He could never apologize to _Howard_ who’d been his friend. To Maria Stark, who he’d never even met, but that Howard had loved.

Complicated by the fact that Bucky was scared shitless of the guy. Steve brushed it off, and Bucky thought Steve was being deliberately, stupidly, mulishly blind. Stark could have killed them both and chose not to. What the hell was going to happen when Stark decided that they weren’t worth sparing? The man could have killed them more than a dozen times over in the fight; he was holding back, and Bucky didn’t know why.

Further complicated by the fact that Bucky was completely, totally, and irresistibly drawn to the man. It was the ultimate case of “wanting what you can’t have” and Bucky knew it, which was annoying as fuck.

So, he didn’t hate Stark.

And he didn’t know why Stark kept sending presents.

“You don’t know this is Stark tech,” Steve had tried to reassure him. Again with the blindness. Steve was deliberately being hard-headed for more reasons Bucky didn’t understand.

Until it dawned on him that Steve and Tony might have been lovers; or maybe not quite lovers, but headed in that direction. A destination that Bucky’s arrival had thrown off the path. It would never happen now; Steve would never forgive, and Stark would never forget.

So, even more complicated; Bucky was fucking jealous of a love for his best friend that didn’t even fucking exist anymore.

Jesus Christ. It was a wonder he didn’t ask King T’Challa to go back in the fucking cryo-pod. Anything had to be easier than dealing with the stewed mess of having emotions like a real goddamn person.

Bucky was out of practice being a real goddamn person.

God dammit, his palm itched. He wasn’t used to that, either. The old Hydra arm hadn’t had anything like itches or the ability to sense the touch of another person. It had pain. And pressure.

Of course, he wasn’t entirely sure he’d put it past Stark to install something just to annoy him. Stark seemed that kind of petty, really. Just a little bit.

The itch got worse, steadily, through the day, until Bucky was rubbing at his fingers constantly, whining when he couldn’t dig into skin that wasn’t there, couldn’t get any relief to his frazzled nerves. He was within an ace of going to Princess Shuri -- she’d been in charge of the installation, and maybe she could help -- when his eyes fell on the pencil Steve had left out in their shared quarters.

Bucky picked it up in his right hand; a perfectly normal pencil. Then he switched it over; he’d never been able to maintain such fine motor control with Hydra’s arm to write anything. He’d learned to be right-handed, although his penmanship was even worse than it had been back in the day.

He cradled the pencil, resting the wood in the precise spots that itched.

His arm jerked down suddenly and he was writing on the table without his permission at all, like someone had taken possession of him

_It’s about fucking time, asshole._

***

_Vladivostok, Russia_

“Out of all the people in the world you could pick to come and save you, and you choose me…” Bucky’s eyes gleamed, and he bit down on his lip, utterly failing to smother a grin. “I’m flattered.”

  
“Just get me out of here!”

Like Tony’s had a fucking choice. There just weren’t very many options open to him. Tony’d never exactly been a team player, and his team was picked pretty thin at the moment. He had a frustrating man-child synthroid and Rhodey. Sometimes the kid, Parker. None of whom he would risk for this; not for him.

Not _ever_ for him.

He wouldn’t even have tried to get through to Barnes, except that, in that particular case, he was willing to say that Barnes _owed_ him. He could let the man pay a debt and then, both of them might have some fucking closure. Maybe Tony could stop waking up at night feeling those fingers close on his arc-reactor, trying to tear it out of him. Could keep that nightmare from turning into memories of ~~Obie~~ Stane from using a handkerchief to remove the arc-reactor, like Tony was something toxic and vile that Stane couldn’t even stand to put his hands on.

Tony gagged at the memory, even now, even with Barnes standing not ten feet away, smirking that little grin that was just ~~tempting. sexy.~~ fucking annoying.

“Can’t fault their taste,” Barnes was saying and Tony dragging his genius brain back into the room where he was fucking zip-tied to an overhead bar, ankles bound together and toes barely brushing the ground. His shoulders had burned and ached for so long that Tony hardly registered the agony anymore, although he suspected it would rush back as soon as he was released. You know, if Barnes ever got around to it.

“Yeah, yeah, pick on the actual human on the goddamn team, I know,” Tony snapped. God, he was so tired of being damselled. Just _once_ , he’d like someone to strap Captain America to something uncomfortable. “Come on, come on, Pinnochio, let’s get a move on before they come back.”

Barnes strode over, that predator movement, all punishing dominance and aggressive masculinity and Tony was suddenly grateful for the ties because they held him _up_. And then Barnes put his right hand on Tony’s hip and knelt down in front of him.

_Holy Christ._

That was nothing Tony should be visualizing. Not that he was. He wouldn’t do that. He wasn’t so goddamn fucked up in the head that he was having lustful thoughts about the person who’d murdered his parents. Who’d tried damn hard to kill him. He really was not. It was unacceptable.

Tony made a sound. Some sort of sound, he didn’t mean to make a sound. It was a cough, or a little bit of a loud breath or something.

Barnes glanced up, those long eyelashes framing eyes the color of clouds in the winter.

Okay, so Tony might have made a sound.

_You are so, so fucked up, Stark._

“Look, if you’re not gonna blow me while you’re down there, you could at least do something useful.”

Barnes’s tongue flicked out to lick his lower lip.

“Was that a request?”

 _What? What the hell even?_ “What the fuck is wrong with you, Barnes?” Except that Tony’s dick was twitching. Getting hard.

Barnes’s eyes shifted, his gaze was drawn to Tony’s ~~waist~~ groin. “Oh my god,” Barnes choked suddenly. He stared up at Tony, and that was really unfair, because --

Tony couldn’t even think why it was unfair, just that it was, and he wanted to nope right the hell out of this conversation except… except he was still tied up and Barnes was looking at him like Tony was a goddamn dessert course.

The metal hand, the one Tony had designed, crafted, fabricated, modified. Tony still could control it, a little. He’d made some installs to it -- hey, it wasn’t meant for removing Barnes’ free will, so long as what Barnes’ free will wasn’t trying to kill Tony. Tony thought that was a perfectly good use of the tech. And reasonable. -- and the nanobots that he’d used to summon to armor could work on it. Different frequency, and that was the one left open when Ten Rings had stuffed him in this goddamn shielded Pit of Despair.

He didn’t want to do that, not while Barnes was _right there in front of him_ , and Tony was still bound; his control wasn’t that good. Barnes had to cooperate. Or be caught off guard. Just enough, enough to let Tony escape. Enough to write a message, provided Barnes picked up the goddamn pencil.

But Tony had to admit, the idea of smacking Barnes in the face with his own goddamn hand had its appeal. He visualized it, in as much detail as possible.

Which was his excuse for why he missed it when Barnes tore through the zip ties. Not like a few bitty pieces of plastic were going to survive against an adamantium laced titanium-steel alloyed arm.

Tony stumbled and fell.

And Barnes caught him.

And that was awkward, because they were kissing close. Tony could fucking taste Barnes’ breath in the air between them, the way heat swirled in the narrow gap between their bodies. And… apparently Tony wasn’t the only one sporting wood.

Tony raised his arms; to push Barnes away? To draw him closer? Tony didn’t even know.

Barnes just continued to look at him; eyes serious and at the same time, questioning. His mouth twitched a little, that smug smile. Plush lips parted.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Tony said, and he wasn’t even sure what he was daring, or not daring, Barnes to do.

“Nah,” Barnes said, and he licked his damn lip again, and how was that even remotely fair? “I ain’t got time to do you proper, doll.” He let his arm slide under Tony’s, supported him so that Tony could walk, and Tony fucking hated leaning on people, but he had to admit, it was probably for the best. Even he couldn’t make a case for it being better to fall in his face in front of this man rather than being assisted by him.

When Barnes led him out of the compound, Tony realized why he hadn’t been in a rush. Bodies littered the floor, blood spilled in the corridors.

“You killed them all?”

“Only the ones who were stubborn about getting out of the way,” Barnes said. “I gave them a chance to run.”

“So, you killed all of them.”

“Pretty much,” Barnes said. He didn’t… look happy about that. There was a certain set to his jaw that Tony was familiar with; regret. Remorse.

“Why did you come for me?” _Why did you do this, if you were going to have to kill again, and you hate it?_

  
"Because if anyone's going to bring you to your knees, it's gonna be me."


End file.
